Buckeye bobcat captured, freed from debris stuck around its neck and released

BUCKEYE, AZ (3TV/CBS 5) - After four long nights, an injured bobcat in the Buckeye community has finally been found and received the care she needs. For months, a bobcat has been a favorite at Buckeye’s Sun City festival neighborhood. The animal got the name ‘Mama’ as she was often seen having two kittens with her at a time. But, recently, people noticed that ‘Mama’ had what appeared to be a dryer vent hose stuck around her neck.

The Buckeye community came together to try and catch Mama so she could get the hose removed from her neck and the neighborhood made a GoFundMe where all donations went towards professional trappers to help Mama.

A day after Arizona’s Family reported on this story, we received an update that Mama had been caught, and the hose was removed from her neck. “When she got in the cage and kind of moving back and forth, it was binding when she would turn around from position to position. One of the times when she had rotated around the trap, it gave her enough leverage to where it started to slip off,” said Casey Bartalos, a trapper with Fox Wildlife who says Mama got stuck in a flex hose. “I just reached right in and grabbed it the rest of the way, and it popped right off.”

The Arizona Game and Fish gave Bartalos the go-ahead to release Mama into the Sun City Festival Neighborhood. He says they plan to reunite her with her family.

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